by Charlie Edwards | Sep 26, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, UK
Menzies Campbell, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats is the latest member of the establishment to call for a review of British defence policy. Following in the footsteps of the Conservative’s Forsyth Commission the Campbell Review says very little we don’t know already, offering up the same concerns over the military convenant, describing the armed forces as “overstretched” and the defence budget as being in crisis. The review still made the news – criticism of the military fills column inches, and it didn’t matter that pretty much everything Sir Menzies said on the Today programme had been said before either by the Conserviatve Party or by Anthony Forster and Tim Edmunds last year. But will this latest review have any effect? There are reasons to be both optmistic and pessimistic.
First, political consensus is now firmly in favour of a review at some point in the future. Campbell was wrong to suggest that the Strategic Defence Review did not predict the costs of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, that wasn’t the point of the review – the aim of the review was to codify what had already happened in the 1990s – hence why we are in the mess we are in now.
Second, there is a worrying lack of capacity in Westminster and Whitehall to think innovately about defence policy. The Government have been pretty poor in thinking strategically about the future of defence, while the MoD (considering it is supporting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan) has been woeful – and much of the responsibility for this lies with Ministers and senior officials.
Third, we must challenge the assumption that the MoD has the capacity to think creatively and strategically about the future. It doesn’t. The best work is being done in the FCO, HSC and PMSU. The new post of Director of Strategy at the MoD is timely and very welcome – capacity will need to be built up internally.
Fourth, we need to challenge the false choice made by political parties that ‘the armed forces should either do less and differently, or increase in the defence budget.’ If you start the process by thinking about institutiuons or budgets you will not achieve transformation but are most likely to make short term decisons which have negative consequences down the line (anyone got a spare pound for the carriers?).
Fifth, communications, or the almost complete lack of it. There are a handful of individuals in Main Building, and the military who get this, they are the exception. MoD communications, as we have made reference to before, are weak, utterly reactive, and often fail to get the message across clearly and coherently. There is a limit to how many times you can appear on Top Gear!
Above all Menzies Campbell’s review calls for a public debate on the future of defence. It’s unlikely to happen unless political parties admit they don’t have the answers and start listening and the MoD opens up and starts communicating to Whitehall and the rest of the UK about what defence is for in the 21st century.
by Jules Evans | Sep 12, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia, Global system
I’m in Moscow for a few days, where the weather is miserable and the mood is worse. The stock market has lost 50% of its value since May, much of it since the Russian invasion of Georgia, which raised the political risk premium for Russian securities.
I happened to be here at the same time as the Valdai Group, an annual collection of some of the top Russia-watchers from around the world, who come here at the invitation of the government, to meet the Russian political elite. It’s arranged by Novosti, the state news agency. Yesterday the experts met with Putin, this morning they met with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, and as I write they are meeting with Dmitri Medvedev, in the plush surroundings of GUM, the luxury department store next to Red Square. Why they’re meeting there I don’t know – perhaps Medvedev wants to show how rich and glamorous the new Russia is.
A friend of mine at Novosti let me in to the meeting with Lavrov this morning, on the strict understanding I didn’t directly report any of his comments, as all Valdai meetings are supposedly off-record, though I saw the Times’ diplomatic correspondent feverishly phoning in a story right after the meeting.
Anyway, a couple of interesting perceptions I came away with, which I think I can share without breaking my promise. Firstly, the title of Lavrov’s presentation was: ‘The World Geo-Political Revolution at the Beginning of the 21st Century: Russia’s role’. It made me laugh, because it was so grandiose. And yet it is also typically Russian – Russia has always been annoyed by the feeling it is young and immature compared to the West, and has always dreamt of in fact being in the vanguard, rather than bringing up the rear, and playing some sort of Messianic and revolutionary role in world affairs.
This is what Dostoevsky thought Russia’s role would be – the spiritual saviour of the world via Orthodox Christianity. This Messianism channelled itself easily into Bolshevism, and Russians took immense pride in the idea they were the vanguard of humanity, leading it towards a world geo-political revolution. And now, I guess, they are taking pride in the thought that they are leading a new geo-political revolution, from a unipolar to a multipolar world. Lavrov spoke about how many non-Western countries had expressed their support for Russia’s actions in Georgia, and even expressed nostalgia for the USSR, when the world was a balance of powers rather than unipolar.
The other thing that came up is Russia’s relationship with the UK. Lavrov mentioned an article he had seen, it was on the Telegraph’s blog, which quoted sources in the FCO saying Lavrov had held a very bad-tempered conversation with Miliband in which Miliband had been ‘forced to endure a four-letter-word tirade’. Apparently Lavrov had said ‘who are you to f- lecture me?’ and then asked Miliband whether he had the first idea of Russian history.
Lavrov denied such swearing took place, and said he had ordered the transcript of the conversation to be posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website. I almost wish the story was true and he had told our uppity foreign secretary where to effing go. But you can tell clearly enough what he thinks of Miliband from his response to Miliband’s article in The Times here.
Lavrov must be getting tired of his private conversations with foreign ministers ending up in the press – another conversation with Condoleeza Rice ended up being made public in the UN Security Council, much to Russia’s chagrin.
Meanwhile, Miliband’s tough stance towards Russia just keeps getting tougher. Apparently, he cancelled the scheduled visit of some bag-pipers, who were going to play in a military parade on Red Square to celebrate Moscow Day. That’ll show them.
by Jules Evans | Aug 27, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia
The typical criticism of the Foreign Office is the one eloquently expressed in John Le Carre’s The Constant Gardener – that they are pitiless practitioners of real-politik who care more about stability than idealism, and who only really work to protect the interests of British corporations, rather than British values.
But on Russia, the FCO seems to have erred on the other side. They seem committed to sacrificing our strategic relationship with Russia on the altar of pointless liberal grand-standing.
The rot set in, it seems to me, when the previous ambassador to Moscow, Sir Roderic Lyne, was replaced by the present ambassador, Sir Anthony Brenton. Lyne was well-liked, tactful, amusing (always a great asset in Russia) and – in a word- diplomatic. Brenton was more of an analyst, highly intelligent, but lacking in the social skills and sureness of touch that Lyne possessed.
Brenton made the error of attending the ‘Other Russia’ political rally in 2006. The Other Russia movement was an opposition movement led by Garry Kasparov, which also included Eduard Limonov, a proto-fascist punk. Other countries, such as the US, sent government figures to the opposition conference, but the only ambassador present was the UK’s.
It was a mistake. An ambassador of course keeps touch with the various political factions in a country, but they should never publicly throw in their lot with an opposition, particularly an opposition which had so little popular support in Russia. Garry Kasparov gets an enormous amount of press in the West, but he’s barely even a marginal figure in Russian politics. And the Kremlin was furious with this public support for the opposition. Brenton is being replaced in October, but his time in Moscow has been disastrous for UK-Russian relations.
Then, when Alexander Litvinenko was brutally murdered in London, I was surprised to hear the British government come out and, basically, accuse the Kremlin of the murder, and condemn the Kremlin for failing to extradite Andrei Lugovoi. Miliband, new to the job and all-fired-up, gave the Kremlin an ultimatum – extradite Lugovoi or else.
But the Kremlin was never going to extradite Lugovoi – firstly, because the UK almost always refuses Russia’s requests for extradition (including requests to extradite Litvinenko himself) on the grounds that Russia’s judicial system can’t be trusted. So why should Russia cooperate with us? And secondly, why would the FSB, which is incredibly paranoid about MI6 and thinks it rules the world, hand over one of its agents, albeit a somewhat rogue agent, to MI6?
So Miliband was left looking outspoken, weak, and naive.
In the Georgian crisis, there were no good-guys. The Georgian government’s response to fighting with South Ossetians was extremely heavy-handed, with a huge bombardment of Tskhinvali by artillery. A balanced response would have condemned Russia’s involvement in the crisis, while also asserting the need to protect the lives of Ossetian civilians, which the Georgian government does not seem willing to protect.
But Miliband again weighed in with a surprisingly outspoken and one-sided response, which blamed Russia entirely for the conflict. His piece in the Times was such a one-sided polemic that it came as something of a shock to read at the end of it ‘David Miliband is the Foreign Secretary’.
He is now travelling to Ukraine to drum up ‘the widest possible support for a coalition against Russian aggression’. What is the gameplan here? Is this just a coalition ‘against Russia’? What are the coalition’s concrete goals?
It just seems really badly thought out, just more liberal grandstanding, more unnecessary alienation of Russia, and even potentially alienation of Ukrainians, half of whom speak Russian, and who feel more sympathy with Russia than any British youth stepping off a plane to deliver a speech. Ukraine has deep ties with Russia, and depends on Russian gas, so will never sign up to some vague ‘coalition against Russia’.
President Yushchenko might meet with Miliband and voice support, but Yushchenko is deeply unpopular and on the way out, while prime minister Timoshenko, the rising power and likely next president, has already said Ukraine wants to keep out of any military conflicts and has conspicuously failed to condemn Russia’s actions in Georgia. I wonder if she will even bother meeting Miliband.
So our foreign minister will again look weak, toothless and naive.
Yes, Ukraine’s government wants to join NATO. But its population doesn’t, so that is unlikely to happen as well. Ukraine is a country which has, at times, looked like it could be split into two, a Russian-speaking and a Ukrainian-speaking part. They are trying to forge a unity out of their young country. The last thing they need is some vain young Brit trying to draw a battle-line through the middle of their country.
Whatever happened to an intelligent, and diplomatic FCO? When did it become so shrill, so driven by the desire to look good domestically rather than achieve anything real globally?
I’m not for a moment claiming that the Russian government is anything other than a KGB kleptocracy which picks fights with small neighbouring countries in order to increase its popularity at home. But there’s no point grand-standing against it. Identify your goals, then identify the best way to achieve them. Simply mouthing off against Russia might feel noble but it’s counter-productive – the regime is very popular, and is likely to be in power for many years to come.
The best way to limit iRussian expansionism is to take away the excuse for its expansionism by making sure that former colonies – Georgia, Ukraine, the Baltic countries – respect the rights of Russian citizens living within their borders. If the EU takes a pro-active stance on that, it takes the wind out of Russia’s victimist rhetoric.
by Alex Evans | Aug 23, 2008 | Conflict and security, Global system, Middle East and North Africa, UK
Yesterday afternoon, I waded through the full 75 page High Court Judgement on Binyam Mohamed v. Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. It’s hard to escape the sense that the FCO is not happy with the US.
The headline finding of the Judgement was that FCO has to hand over documents to Mohamed’s defence team which could help his defence (by backing up his claim that his ‘confession’ was the result of being held incommunicado – and tortured – for two years prior to 2004, when he was moved to Guantanamo).
Initially, the FCO defence was that as well as being detrimental to UK national security, it would also be irrelevant to hand over the documents – since they would be given to Mohamed’s defence team anyway in due course, as part of the US Military Commission trial process.
But not any more. According to the Judgement, “[T]he Foreign Secretary no longer contends that the United States military prosecutors will disclose the material” – a significant implied criticism of the US Military Commissions process.
What’s more, the FCO isn’t only saying that it doesn’t think the US will release the material. The Court also notes that the Foreign Secretary has “in effect [accepted] that he has in his possession material that is potentially exculpatory or otherwise relevant to the proceedings before the United States Military Commission” [emphasis added]. Later, when the Judgement issues stinging criticism to the US for failing to provide any information on where Mohamed was being held between 2002 and 2004, it makes clear how annoyed the FCO is too:
It is clear that the United Kingdom Government considers that such material should be made available. All its strenuous actions have been directed to that end. It is its view that the material should be made available by the United States Government which has so far declined to do so. It has therefore been compelled to resist this claim.
Looking at what human rights advocates are saying about the judgement, it’s apparent that some of them are hoping that David Miliband will take this chance to mark a clear break with past UK policy. Here, for instance, is Louise Christian – a solicitor who acted for some of the British Guantanamo families – in the Guardian yesterday:
The last time we heard the words “ethical foreign policy” was years ago in the time of the late Robin Cook but they could have reappeared in the recent article by David Miliband.
Yes, she’s referring to that article. Full marks for political savvy. She continues:
Instead of waiting for more shaming disclosures of the same kind as in this judgment the government could make a real break with the moral equivalence of the Blair government by setting up a public inquiry and devising a new code for the security services to ensure they never “facilitate” torture and abuse again.
Normally, anyone’s reaction to this would be: fat chance. But this time, there are several factors that make it at least not totally absurd to imagine that David Miliband might be willing to consider breaking with the FCO’s traditional linguistic and legal contortions on rendition and torture. Here are three reasons why:
1) It’s already clear that there’s a serious can of worms here; that the High Court has a tin-opener; and that it is prepared to use it. If the extent of UK complicity in “facilitating” (the High Court’s word) a US policy of rendition, illegal detention and torture is about to become clear anyway, then why not make a virtue out of necessity, go the whole hog and hold a Take Out the Trash Day?
2) David Miliband himself is not in the frame for any of the wrongdoing covered in this case. All this happened before he arrived at the Foreign Office. So politically, he has nothing to lose personally, and lots to gain. Indeed, human rights NGOs may even be right to see him as a kindred spirit.
3) You’d expect the main worry for the UK government to be the risk of irreparable damage to the UK’s relationship with the US. But on the political side of that relationship, that risk is as low as it’s ever going to get. The Bush Administration is on the way out, and is a lame duck anyway. More importantly, both candidates for the Presidency are committed opponents of torture and rendition: so the policy is on the way out too.
Admittedly, the intelligence side of the US / UK relationship is another story. Spook communities on both sides of the Atlantic are deeply concerned about where judicial processes – here, in the US and elsewhere – are going to lead. (Witness B in the High Court case – an MI5 officer who interrogated Mohamed in 2002 – is clearly crapping himself about prosecution or even ICC referral, for instance. Well, good.) One supposes that US agencies might be less than ecstatic if their UK counterparts were to grass them up, and that UK intelligence agencies might make that fact plain to Ministers in no uncertain terms.
But look at the big picture (something David Miliband is good at).
The US’s whole approach of rendition and torture isn’t just a disgrace, though it is that (High Court: “the use of torture by a state is dishonourable, corrupting and degrading the [to] State which uses it and the legal system which accepts it”). Nor is it just that torture provides wrong information, though it does (High Court, quoting a Judgement from 1793: “a confession forced from the mind by the flattery of hope, or by the torture of fear comes in so questionable a shape when it is to be considered as the evidence of guilt, that no credit out to be given to is; and therefore it is rejected”).
Above all, from a purely strategic point of view, the use of torture in the ‘war on terror’ represents a stupendous own goal when assessed from its own objectives, namely preventing terrorism.
Every media story about US use of torture is a recruiting sergeant for radicalisation. We know this. But for as long as the UK fails to condemn that properly and make (as Edward Gibbon would put it) a “manly admission of error”, we continue to send that recruiting sergeant out into the streets to sign people up. How many young Muslim kids in Bradford or Forest Gate will be sickened to read this week that MI5 has “facilitated” torture? How many of them will want to do something about it?
The UK – much more than the US – is on the front line of terrorism. We do not have the luxury of being able to go along with an approach dictated by the US that we know to be actively counter-productive. We must have learned by now that our best defence against terrorism is to run our colours unequivocally up the mast of the Rule of Law, and show that we practise what we preach about our values. (Don’t just take my word for it; take that of former Cabinet Office Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator David Omand).
The Judiciary has just done UK counter-terrrorism strategy a big favour by underlining the continuing strength of that Rule of Law. David Miliband should seize the opportunity it’s created.
P.S. – The US, on the other hand, has been quite fantastically cavalier towards UK judicial process. The High Court records that it wrote to the ‘Convening Authority’ for the Military Commissions special trial process (the Honorable Susan Crawford, since you ask), to request that the prosecution process against Mohamed be put on pause while the High Court consider the case in Britain – a pretty standard legal request.
Not only did she fail to accede to this request, she didn’t bother to reply to the High Court’s letter – even after being chased. The Court’s Judgement says “It is a matter of considerable regret that no response was received [from the Convening Authority], despite our request in the course of the hearing” – which, for judicial language, is incandescently pissed off. Why we should continue to extradite UK citizens to face charges in the US on the basis of incomplete evidence when our own judicial process gets this kind of treatment in return is now a question of even greater topicality than before. But that’s for another post.
P.P.S. Thanks to Daniel for helpfully pointing out that Pauline Neville-Jones – the Conservative front becnh spokesperson on national security – used to run the Joint Intelligence Committee, not MI5, and was therefore not running MI5 at the time the facts of Binyam Mohamed’s case were being played out (as this post at first mistakenly suggested). Duh.
by Daniel Korski | Aug 20, 2008 | East Asia and Pacific, Global system, UK
With the Beijing Olympics about to be declared a success, attention will turn to London. One question is on everyone’s minds: can London 2012 match the power and fanfare of the Chinese Games?
But there is another lesson to take home from Beijing: how to sell your country abroad. Even before the Opening Ceremony, the world had been exposed to China for years. Eighteen months ago, the impressive Terracotta Warriors stormed London. Then came Kung Fun Panda, the Hollywood story of a bungling panda who aspires to be a martial arts warrior. China’s National Ballet performed “Swan Lake” at the Royal Opera House whilst 2004 was “Chinese Culture Year” in France.
Numerous TV commercials are using Chinese-looking script or placing mascots – like Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger – on a Tibetan mountains. Newspapers are filled with reports from Chinese villages whilst books on the Middle Kingdom are ensconced on the best-seller lists.
This is exactly what the Chinese government hoped for. The Beijing Olympics has been about sport, to be sure. But they were always going to be about more than just that. For the Communist Party, the 29th Olympiad was seen as China’s “coming out party”, an event to mark the country’s acceptance and recognition from a sometimes hostile family of nations.
Since their modern re-launch in 1859, the Olympics have been one of the best ways to show-case a country; the Greeks demolished half-a-century of stereotyping when they pulled off the Athens Games.
For Britain, the 2012 London Olympics can play a similar role. The event will be the single greatest opportunity to re-brand Britain since 1997 and following the image-destroying partnership between Tony Blair and George Bush. Until the Queen dies, no other event is likely to make people around the world focus on Britain.
In the book The Man Who Saved Britain Simon Winder argued that James Bond upheld the British ego while a once-great power was trying to come to terms with its diminished post-World War II role. The Games will offer a rare chance to do the same; to re-launch Britain’s image in the world. Forget the “cool Britannia” of the Blair era; what may be needed may is less naff but equally modern and positive.
But the Games offer an opportunity not only to promote Britain’s culture and values, but also to attract tourists, students and investors; and to promote British exports.
The country is heading towards a recession. Consumers are battered by declining purchasing power, plummeting house prices and falling credit availability. The only way out will be to increase British exports, much as in the 1990s. Whilst the volume of British exports will be determined by economic fundamentals – a weak pound and low interest rates – there is scope for government action.
Sadly, for all that potential benefit rather than seizing the opportunity, the 2012 preparations have been off to an uninspiring start. Google the words “London Olympics” and after three official URLs comes the heading “Olympic chiefs under fire for puerile logo”. Debate has mostly been about how much money the Games will cost.
In the Foreign Office, the enormous task of gearing Britain’s diplomatic network to promote the country, its exports and its values is set to fall to a middle-ranking official.
Last year, UK Trade & Investment – the government’s export-promotion arm – seemed thrilled, according to its own board minutes, that Lord Coe, “agreed that he will devote some time to UKTI activities and has provided a quote in support of UKTI’s Olympic objectives.” Splendid – but his lordship’s involvement hardly substitutes for Ministerial leadership.
If a cross-governmental plan to use the Olympics to promote Britain does indeed exist, I would be curious to know if it includes sending the Elgin Marbles around the world? Will it call for more money to British films? Will Simon Cowell be drafted in to host a “The World’s Got Talent” show, with a finale in London’s Dome? Does the plan include initiatives to collaborate with Rockstar, the makers of Grand Theft Auto, the world’s best-selling video game?
As a new collection of articles – in part written by Alex and David and edited by up-and-coming Foreign Office minister Jim Murphy – argues, this is exactly the way Britain will need to think if it wants to promote itself. The lack of plans, senior staff attention, and ministerial leadership, however, does no bode well.
It is time for the government to take a leaf out of the Murphy playbook and launch a three-year campaign to promote Britain. The benefits are many and for the whole of Britain – as the Chinese have shown.
